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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Raiding - Confession: I am a palamino turner

Yes, that is me palamino turning. What is that, I hear you ask? Well, it's a term that Kyxyn had from his days from his hardcore raiding guild which describes keyboard turners. Yes, that is me. I never mouse turn. And it never really came up until today because I never really had to do anything.

Sabre didn't show up for raid on Monday night, and so Raked took his spot. Norushen had a few funny hiccups to start - apparently Asys decided to try healing wearing his enhance gear and didn't realise until just before the second pull. Morz was having some bad connection issues. I was busy chatting to people and I was hanging around just in case, but they didn't need me. Norushen went down but it was messy as poop. Raked landed up with warforged Gloves of the Golden Protector, and Sev got Bracers of Broken Causation. Morz rolled Sash of the Last Guardian.

Anyway onto Sha. Luxy had a family emergency and had to go, so Morz stayed and Asys DPS'd and I came in. I wanted to see this maze that I read about, and I got ported in first go. It really was like pacman! But I failed because I ran into a ghost. Everyone was telling me to mouse turn, and ... I had no idea what they meant. I thought they meant mouse run.

So Xyn wanted me to practice mouse turning, as a laugh. So I was running around with my mouse, and Kyxyn said.. that doesn't look like you're mouse turning, and I realised that I didn't know how to mouse turn (except for click to move and when I jump and face backwards in PvP to typhoon people away from me). Then came the groans of dismay from my raid group.

"OMG, I am going to go and apply to Sanctity* right now..."

"I can't BELIEVE that you have been keyboard turning this WHOLE TIME...."

"How can you PvP without mouse turning?"

"Even my 6 year old daughter is a mouse turner..."

"ZOMG our GM ... is a keyboard turner... all this time... what's that 9 years?"

You get the idea. Even after they explained to me how to do it (use your LEFT button to change where you're facing then click both buttons.....), I struggled with it. I was practicing and Aza said.

"OMG are really doing this? We are in the middle of a heroic raid and we are getting Navi to practice MOUSE TURNING??"

Anyway, the next time I went in, I died instantly because I turned around to try to get a yellow ball and got eaten by a Sha, or ran into a wall. Well, you can imagine the teasing I got then.

"HOW can you die in like ONE SECOND..."

"NEVER turn around! Keep going!"

I was cringing, but I love the idea of the pacman thing and I want to do it again so I can get it right. But you can imagine that EVERYONE in the raid is hoping that I'm not going in there.

We had a few more goes at Sha, with Morz swapping to DPS whilst Asys healed. The two of them did similar DPS but Morz did damage when he was healing since he was Disc, so I put him back to healing and Asys DPSing - besides, with Asys DPSing we got extra buffs for the melee (melee haste) and with Morz DPSing we didn't, as Owl already brought spell haste to the group. Our best attempt was sub 50% but it's pretty intense, and the enrage timer seems generous - it's that final 30% which is gonna be UGLY! I spent the next half hour after raid running around outside the Shrine on the lines practicing mouse turning... but even though I know how to do it, I don't like it, but I guess I should break my 9 year bad habit and keep persisting.

I had to learn how to be a keyboard turner for other games. I started out as a mouse turner in WoW but didn't use the keyboard correctly. I would use my right hand (I'm right handed) on the mouse then take my hand OFF the mouse to use the 10-key pad to use my spells. I had to train myself to use the top row of number keys. I still haven't mastered using ctrl and alt (modifiers) with the keys though.

It's funny what you get used to, I can't remember how to not turn with the mouse. My son-in-law taught me that one. I had seen characters standing still and then kind of flip around and asked him how they did that.

Well, now I feel less bad that I sometimes keyboard turn too, depending on the character and the situation and where my hands happen to be. I'll have to practice more to break the habit entirely too.:P Oh well, continually teaching ourselves new stuff is one of the things that keeps everything interesting, right? :D

I'm sad I missed it! LOL! I wouldn't have made fun of you though. You can force yourself to mouse turn by unbinding those keys, my A and D are strafe left/right and I use Q and E for abilities cause my tiny hands can't reach past 4 LOL I need all the extra keys I can get!

I was still kb turning in the maze last night, so I did what you said and made my turning keys into strafe keys (after raid though). My BG afterwards was very bizarre with me running into rocks and things but it did force me to learn!

Raiding Confession from me: I used to raid in Wrath on my laptop in bed, with no mouse, just my touchpad. When my Concur Guildies found out, the mocking also began. And I also thought that as a Hunter, I needed Spell Power gear because I had Arcane Shot and that was magic based. xD We all have our secrets! Well done for being brave and admitting!

Luxy is spot on. That's how I learnt, once I had bought a mouse obviously haha. I changed A, D and the Left and Right arrows (just to be safe) to strafe and unbound turning so I had to learn mouse.

And I too use Q and E for spells because of my baby hands :D I'm also a spoilt girl and own a Razer Naga Epic mouse, so I have a bunch of buttons just for my thumb. That helps!

Thanks to you Casa I am doing that now and forcing myself to do it. By next week there will be no more kb turning!And I am amazed you could raid on your touchpad. That's truly incredible! I have difficulty doing my farm on my touchpad! But that's not to say you can't play wow on your touchpad because I do it but I wouldn't do anything important because I tell you, flying is really difficult for me on touchpad.

Hey Navi, don't feel so bad. I'm a 14/14H raider who also primarily keyboard turns. My mouse is busy hovering over Grid for healing purposes, so I just don't have it available to steer very often. I do the Pac-Man run without my mouse and it works just fine -- it's more about knowing what path to take (and your raiders upstairs DPSing your Corrupted Fragment so that you aren't stuck in there too long) than about using the mouse to turn!

(Ignore the orb behind you. Turn left at the first possible opportunity, eating the orb in the "doorway", and left again, to run back in the opposite direction you started in. Yes, a Sha is coming, but he'll turn, relax. Eat the orb in the corner, turn right, get broken out!)

I do recognise that defaulting to keyboard turning can make my movement a bit less fluid than those players who turn with their mouse, and that certainly in many other games mouse-turning is the only way to do it at all. Having no love for the FPS genre, I've just never become "fluent" in mouse navigation and I haven't had to yet. I'm working on learning it, too, but perhaps my favourite thing about this game is that you can get pretty far in it with all sorts of "suboptimal" setups :)

Hi Dayani/Dedralie, I am honoured and thrilled you have dropped by to visit! And at first a little embarrassed that you were reading my post about being a fail palamino turner, but now I feel a little bit better. Yes that orb behind is a trap! Thanks for the tips, I was running straight because I had less turning.. but I will try the early turn.And you are right you can get pretty far in this game with suboptimal setups - I was kb turning for 10 years after all :D

I play sitting on the couch with my laptop on my lap, and every once in a while my character will spin around for no reason. If you notice that chances are either my wife or the cats just sat on my mouse :)

I think it's definitely different for a healer as you are more likely to be using your mouse for your heals or targetting different players.

As a tank you tend to use your mouse to move the camera around a lot.

As a dps all you really need the mouse for is movement.

I agree with all the other people that said just unbind it. I did that many many years ago and couldn't imagine not having those extra key bindings for other abilities. Same with all the keys around ASDW I would have a very difficult time not having all of them for keybinds.